


It Takes an Ocean Not to Break

by youngdarling



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Drug Use, His Last Vow, M/M, Mild Pain Kink, Missing Scene, References to Drugs, Scars, but also very scared, john is very brave, metaphors are for lovers, or maybe it did, sherlock is in looove, well I bet that didn't feel too good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 07:58:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1933020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youngdarling/pseuds/youngdarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years before Sherlock met him, John Watson was already a miracle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Takes an Ocean Not to Break

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: A million thank yous to YayCoffee for being an amazing beta and a very bad influence! :P Words can't describe your terrificness :-x! Here's to many more awesome convos on love, Annie Clark, and, uh, stitches :"? <333
> 
> The title and lyrics come from The National's "Terrible Love." I highly recommend that you listen to it, especially the alternate version, because HOLY SHIT.

 

_it takes an ocean not to break._  
   
   
   
but I won't follow you  
into the rabbit hole  
I said I would  
but then I saw  
your shiver bones  
they didn't want me to  
((the national, "terrible love"))  

  
   
   
The flop-house in Woolwich is like so many others in this sprawling city of his: one that probably should have been gentrified or razed at least a decade ago, and yet here it stands, strange and faded, a tagged and tumbling Victorian monstrosity. Inside, the sunlight filters in cautiously, lighting the specks of dust that float in through dingy windows. The light catches the garish spray paint in the dullness, a reminder that this house was glorious, once. It was so easy to find this place, this _particular_ place. So very easy, so long as he doesn't _think_ about it, doesn't think about John finding him (though he knows John will. John always finds him).  
   
The first time (though it is far from the first) he lets a woman named Sophie inject him. He watches the premature lines curl around wide brown eyes, deduces the cause of the scar beneath her left eye as she flicks the needle and finds a vein. Before this, she was trauma nurse with a husband and two children, who started out stealing Oxy from work. She had a house in the suburbs--Chiswick, he would imagine, given that her husband is Canadian. The scar--well, that's easy. That happened when her husband found out she'd driven the children to day school while strung out. She doesn't have to tell him a word of this, of course, and he doesn't care enough to watch her mouth fall wide before him as he unravels it all.   
   
"Why are you here?" she asks, tracing a finger around the tiny mark she's just left on the inside of his arm.  
   
He doesn't answer, laying back on the mattress and closing his eyes to enjoy the start of it: the prickling heat, the rush from his head down through his arms, his legs, beyond. It isn't nearly enough, not even half as much as he needs to calm his nerves, to smooth the worry lines from his face, but it will have to do. He has to stay sharp or Magnussen will slip through his fingers again.  
   
"Was she beautiful?" It's Sophie's tired voice, laying beside him now, her long, soft hair obscuring his view of the crumbling walls.  
   
"Oh, yes," he tells her, enjoying the shiver this gives him, this terrible half-lie. "Beautiful." Now his voice is only half his own, his body starting to float apart. "Beautiful."  
   
.:.  
   
It is a distant dream, a desert mirage, but it is as real to him as it is possible for anything to be. He's heard John's army buddies recount the stories often enough. Captain John Watson in a dusty tent beneath the honey-gold sun of Helmand, covered in sweat and other men's blood. Captain John Watson, with his deft hands, saving a man from bleeding out on a low, dirty camp bed thousands of miles from home.  
   
Years before Sherlock met him, John Watson was already a miracle.  
   
.:.  
   
In his half-present state in the tired house, Sherlock continues to remember. Once, a particularly nasty fight leaves him with a knife wound to the outer thigh. John ties it off quickly with Sherlock's ever-present scarf, thanking God and the fates and lucky fuck that it's only a slice and not a stab as he helps him into a taxi. He tosses the driver an extra twenty as the cabbie starts to blanch at the sight of the blood. John is swearing the whole way, gone into army mode already. His face is set, nearly calm, but Sherlock knows like he knows his own bones that John is hearing the explosions, the screams, the whirl of the copter rotors.  
   
"St Barts," John tells the driver, clipped and sharp.

"No," Sherlock says, breathing a little shallowly. "No, you're taking me home, John." 

"Like fuck I am. You'll need stitches. You're bleeding all--"

"I don't care. Take me home, John. Take me home and do it yourself. I don't want anyone else." He's starting to see white spots in front of his eyes, but he doesn't take his gaze from John.

"Christ, Sherlock," John says, more than a little undone. "I don't know if I have the--"

"Of course you do. I've been stocking up on suture kits for months. A little wink to that brunette nurse at the equipments desk and--" He stops, going cold and clammy. 

John relents. "Turn around. Two-two-one-B Baker Street. Now."

Sherlock almost manages a smile.

He lets John help him upstairs, glad for once that Mrs Hudson is on holiday, glad to lean on John's steady weight, glad for the strange smell of home, glad for it all. He lowers himself onto the couch while John gets everything ready. He comes back in with several packaged kits and a half-empty bottle of scotch.

"There's no anaesthetic for the pain, so you're going to have to make do with this," John says, handing the bottle over.

Pain. Ah, of course. Sherlock had known there was something he was forgetting. He eyes John, taking a careful swig.

"Another. Big one. It's...not going to feel nice, I'm afraid." John winces in sympathy.

Sherlock obeys, coughing as the smoky liquid goes down. It's just enough to make his head spin a little, and he doesn't know whether to focus on John's hands or John's face, doesn't know which will devastate him more. His watchful gaze is all anticipation, rapture, as John begins to thread his pale skin back together, tensing up at the not-unpleasant sting of the needle, calming at the insistence of John's warm touch.

This isn't pain. This is John. This is _pleasure_ ; this is _everything_. He wants to move closer, but from here he can feel John's pulse thrumming where the inside of his wrist touches Sherlock's leg. He closes his eyes and wills John's pulse to speed up and stutter like his is, but John stays focused on the task before him.

At the seventh stitch, Sherlock can't stand it anymore. " _Oh_ ," he breathes out before he realizes what he's done, " _John_."

John looks up for a quick second, a smile crinkling at the outsides of his eyes. "Should've stolen the lidocaine too, then, if you're so bloody clever." Then his eyes go wide as he realizes what this is. He blinks and swallows, fast. "Just a few more," he says, finishing up with a quick tie-off, clipping off the extra thread. He is about to pull his hand away, but Sherlock stills him with two nimble fingers around John's wrist. Ah, there: his pulse jumps like an electric shock.

"Oh no," John warns, voice dangerous and low, "you don't get to do this to me." He says it, he means it, but he doesn't pull away. Still kneeling in front of Sherlock, oh, and he is _angry_ now, he hisses, "Two more inches, Sherlock. Two more, and that would have been your femoral artery. I don't know what you think, but I wouldn't have been able to--I don't know what I would have--"

Without warning, he ducks his head and presses his mouth to Sherlock's stitches, a shaky kiss. Just as quickly he pulls back, standing too quickly and wavering on his feet. "Christ," he says, "Oh, Jesus, Sherlock, I'm sorry, I didn't even--"

"No," Sherlock says, leaning in, and the voice that comes out of him is other-worldly. "You don't get to be sorry, John. Not ever."

John stands stock still, mouth agape, and Sherlock can't take his eyes of the perfect drop of blood on John's lower lip. His blood. John's eyes wrinkle in confusion, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. He looks at it for what Sherlock wants to be forever before taking another step back, stunned and shattered.

 John's exhale is a noise Sherlock has never heard him make before, and never will again. Then, leaving the suture kits strewn all about him, John picks up the scotch, and walks from the room.

.:.

Two years on, the scar has healed in a perfect line. In Serbia, it had been new enough to be red and raised, but now it's just a white mark, perfect. He used to dig his nails into it to sharpen the feeling of the nerves knitting back together, but not anymore. Now there isn't anything.

No feeling left at all.

.:.

He wakes to a familiar voice echoing through the empty house--"No, just used to a better class of criminal." This is not the only voice he can pick out from a distance, or through a crowd. It probably makes little difference that it's the only voice he cares to. His head starts to clear and he shifts in anticipation on the mattress. When he hears John come near, talking to the Whitney boy, he lifts himself up.

"Oh, hello, John," he says, a little too brightly. So easy, it is so devastatingly easy, to slip the mask back on. To hide any feeling, even this. The cases make it easier. He wants this one to drown him, to pull him under and make him forget completely. "Didn't expect to see you here. Come for me, too?"

As he walks from the room, toward the stairs, he looks back at the tumbling ruin. Later, in the silence of his own flat, he vows to himself that the next time he goes to that place, it will be to see it razed to the ground. Houses are not memories, he knows. Houses are not _sentiment_. But one day it will be gone, and then (another lie, on top of lies) they will all be safe.

Safe as houses.


End file.
